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Incident at Airport Called Serious

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Incident at Airport Called Serious

An incident which occurred at Keflavík International Airport on Friday afternoon, involving a Boeing 737-800 airplane from Primera Air Nordic, has been defined as a serious aircraft incident by the Icelandic Accident Investigation Commission, RÚV reports. That means an incident where the circumstances point to that an accident almost took place.

At 5:20 pm on Friday, the plane, with 137 people on board, according to aeroinside.com, overran the end of the runway after landing. There were no injuries to passengers or crew and only minor damage to the aircraft. The cause of the incident is not clear, but it is being investigated by the Accident Investigation Commission. It resulted in all take-offs and landings being canceled until the passengers had been transported by bus from the aircraft to the terminal, where they received emergency assistance from Red Cross staff.

Investigators arrived at the scene about an hour after the plane landed, took reports from both of the pilots and confiscated the plane’s flight recorders, as is standard procedure under such circumstances, in addition to inspecting the scene.

The Accident Investigation Commission launched an official investigation into the incident and reported it to its counterpart in Latvia where the aircraft is registered, and in the US, where it was manufactured, in addition to reporting it to the European Aviation Safety Agency and the International Civil Aviation Organization.

Mbl.is reports that the runway, normally 3,000 m (1.86 mi) long, was about 800 m (0.5 mi) shorter than usual when the plane landed, although Guðni Sigurðsson, Isavia’s communications officers, stated that this should not be the reason for the plane’s trouble. The runway is shorter than usual because part of it is being asphalted—maintenance work done every 20 years. Guðni told mbl.is that such projects are announced to airlines long in advance and that a runway this long should be sufficient for this kind of aircraft.